Dreamscapes

01/05/10

Now in Swakupmond, and the days plans have radically changed. Today was meant to be the day I throw myself out of a really small but perfectly good airplane. Have been dreading it for months and was all supposed to be over by now. Wasn’t accounting for the rain, clouds and sandstorm though. It’s the second time I’ve geared myself up to it and it’s been cancelled due to bad conditions. Maybe I should take it as an omen and just not do it.

Been a busy few days, with lots of amazing scenery. Namibia has to be one of the most dramatic places I’ve ever been. From the huge brown scree piles just past the border to the giant slab faced escarpments towering over the Orange River and its black sand dunes, on to the brown rubble and 300m deep ravines and gulleys of Fish River Canyon. Yesterday was the best of all. We were taken deep into the Namib Desert and towards the coast, where there are 300 kms of towering red sand dunes that rise above the hard baked desert floor. We went to Dune 45, the only dune out of 60 that you are really allowed to climb. Not sure how this restriction is enforced 300 kms of sand. Dune 45 is 150m high, and unsurprisingly it’s not an easy climb. Trudging uphill in soft deep sand, especially for Nick who’s still suffering from his vertigo thingy.

We climbed with the moon still high and the sky lightening to the east. The top of the dune was quite busy so we picked a spot further down next to our tour leader and resident photography expert Gareth. From our perch we got to watch the desert floor and surrounding dunes light up. As the light pours down the dunes and highlights and shadows pick out the curves, all you can hear is the crazy clicking of cameras. Some people have 2 or 3 cameras with them on this trip so they can get every angle with every lens. The sunrise was nice, but it was seeing the red and black shapes made by the ridge of the dunes that everyone was there to see.

The dunes of Sossusvlei.

 

From Dune 45 we drove further into Sossusvlei which is the valley that runs between the dunes. Here we met a bushman called Bussman who took us on a hike around the dunes explaining how plants, animals, and the old bushman people of Southern Africa survived in a place that gets about 3 inches of rain once every twenty years. His stories of the bushman people were amazing. Sadly few live in the desert any more. The western world declared it was wrong of the bushman children to be denied access to education and took them all away from their homes. They were taught how to read and write up until the age of 11. This left them with an education inadequate of helping them survive in the modern world, but also stopping them from learning the skills they needed to return to the bush and to families. The first thing a child was taught in the bush was how to recognize their mother’s footprints in the sand so they could follow them home. Up until the 1920’s it was legal to hunt and kill bushmen. Some people even used to keep the children and raise them as pets.

On the walk we learnt that ‘vlei’ means ‘place where water comes to rest and plants live’. We were taken to visit Deadvlei, which is now an area cut off from any further flood flows as the dunes have enclosed the area. When reaching the brow of the dune that has enclosed Dead Vlei you encounter an unearthly hard white flat floor surrounded by towering red dunes. Team that with the blackened dead trunks of trees sticking up into the deep blue sky and it is photographic heaven. Walking across the sun baked limestone floor with the wind blocking out all other sounds is magical. It has to be one of the most unique places I have and probably ever will visit. 

Spectacular Deadvlei

We spent 5 hours baking in the desert that morning before packing up camp and getting in the bus to do another long hot and dusty drive. Driving further north we went through flat planes of short yellow pampas grass, then to flat planes with nothing for about 100 km. Next we went through deeply undulating canyons up and down about 20 metre rises and falls, then onto sharp granite canyons that looked distinctly like something out of a sci-fi movie. Each of these different terrains going on for 50 km or more without a person or building to be seen. Namibia has to be one of the most empty and extreme places on earth.

Our driver, John enjoying the miles of peace and quiet.

Fish River Canyon

28/04/10
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Trunk of a quver tree at the canyon.

Another quiet bus day. Early start at 4.30. Put the tents down in the dark, breakfast at 5.00, on the road by 5.30. Namibians only put their clocks back once they get a few hundred km into the country, so near the border we’d not had to bother, but now we’ve lost an hour. Or gained an hour, should be able to work it out, but can’t.

Stayed in Herbos last night. Definite downgrade from the night before, no soft grass to put the tent on, just hard packed dirt with baboon prints in it. We were told to watch out for aggressive baboons. Didn’t see any but one of the girls did have a flip flop go missing. She managed to locate its chewed remains, Gareth and John our guide and driver reckoned it was jackals, they were heard screeching in the night. Would have like to have seen them. Did get to see a genet though, a large blue eyed lemur marked cat. The reason we went so far into the middle of nowhere was so we could visit Fish River Canyon for sunset. This is Africa’s equivalent of the Grand Canyon. It was incredible. I’ve never been anywhere like it. The best word I could come out with when I saw it was “Wow”. Been watching to many bad American films I think. Fish River Canyon was first caused by a tectonic rift. It was deepened further by flood then years of river and wind wear. There are plateaus and valleys with the colossal channel of the river winding U-bends through it all. What made this so special was that we had the place more of less to our selves. That is apart from a group of teenagers who appeared from nowhere to play football on the dirt road as the sun went down. There was one small shack there and the construction site of a future tourist stop, surely they didn’t all come out of the shack.

Fish River Canyon

A truck parked on the edge of the canyon.

Now we are back to miles and miles of nothing on the bus. Have 500 km to travel today, at 60 km per hour at best. Read in a book my mum gave me that Namibia is bigger than most of Europe, but has less than 2 million people. There are 10 million people living in Bangkok, and about the same living in the relatively tiny area that makes up London. 2 million people would have to work really hard to create a visible impact upon such a vast landscape. Saying that, we stopped in one tiny blip on the map town, and their bottle shop had a more varied wine selection than many Bangkok supermarkets.

Quiver tree.

Sunset over the canyon.

Empty space

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27/04/10

Namibia. Miles and miles of nothing and hot as hell. No chance of getting car sick today, haven’t turned a corner since we turned onto this road 3 hours ago. We stopped for a bush toilet stop a while ago and there was a distinct lack of ‘bush’. Not even a mound to duck behind. That is apart from the Mordor like mountains that darken the horizon but never get closer. Boys were told to use the front of the bus, girls behind the bus. Strangely I was the only one who was willing to bare their bum. I don’t care if it’s undignified, I’m not bumping along on dirt roads for 3 hours with a full bladder.

Every so often we pass a mountain sized mound of brown dirt and there’ll be words 6ft tall written in English in white stones on the side of it. Strange when we’ve not seen a sole in hours, even stranger when you realize there isn’t a white rock to be seen. Who puts them there, and for whom to read? Another odd thing is the fences. There have been fences on either side of the road the entire journey so far. To keep what in or out I don’t know. Not seen anything out there move, let alone pose a threat to the barren land on the other side of the fence. It’s how I would imagine the surface of the moon to look, only hotter. And with fences.

This morning we had a lie in. 7.00 breakfast before climbing onto a bus that looked like an old fashioned train and driving 12 km up river. We had had a good night’s sleep at the beautiful Felix Unite campsite by the Orange River, and were taken to kayak down it. I was slightly concerned as canoe and rapids had been mentioned. Now rapids perturb me, but not as much as canoes. From experience I have found that getting any form of forward propulsion out of a canoe is beyond me. Kayaks I’m better with, them being better at straight lines and not having the tendency of trying to turn you on your head. I sat in what I was told was the ‘engine’ seat and Nick went behind in the ‘captains’ seat. This seemed to work well. Power I can do, steering I can not. Mostly it was nothing more than a sedate paddle/float down stream. We only encountered two rapids which were less scary that anticipated. The start of the journey was most dramatic though, the wide and smooth river mirroring the blue sky and the 300 high escarpment that the river had cut its way round. This passed and we were left with walls of green vegetation on either side that go back from the river bed until the reach of the water stops and all you’re left with is brown dust stretching to huge black dunes. We stopped for a startlingly refreshing swim halfway on a sand bank in the middle of the river. Seems a world away now we’re baking away in a cloud of dust in our huge great green tin can of a bus.

Ended up in the absolute middle of nowhere. Not a sole for 4 hours. Gone so far into nowhere that the fence has gone. Even the fist sized black rocks that were used in replacement of a fence are gone. Not sure how rocks work as a fence, but at least it’s some sign of civilization. Now there is just brown. Brown rocks everywhere. Any undulation or feature is made by piles of small brown rocks as far as the eye can see. Even the road is made of brown rocks, doesn’t make for comfy riding, just bone shaking.